We have some users on-boarded on the AzureStack multi-node system and they do testing and when they forget to remove stuff and we need to make some changes we might need to remove their resources and as Stanislav mentioned there is a way to actually take over a subscription. There is though a small thing that needs to be added to the PowerShell cmds that can change a Azure Stack user subscription owner when you have a multitennant setup of your Stack, your users will have their own tenant ID´s on the subscriptions.

So to be able to access and remove resources from an user that left his subscription and resources burning you will have to do a update on both Owner and TenantId

So set up your enviroment with the AzureStack tools and PowerShell environment, connect as a cloud operator to the default subscription and then run the following::

We are doing some work in adding functionality and found an issue today! We have quite a few workloads running on a converged setup with Hyper-V nodes accessing storage from Scale-Out File Servers.

In our lab environment we have Hyper-V running on Server 2016 and these get their storage from SOFS and they currently run 2012 R2. For ordinary VM´s that has not been a problem. Now we wanted to get the VHD Scale sets (enhanced shared VHDX) set up for guest clusters running guest OS win 2016.

The documentation says not so much more than you need storage residing on a SMB or CSV volume, but when trying to add a VHDs file we get an error stating that the SOFS server does not recognize the file format of the vhd set and think it is a reserved file for windows!

Using a SMB share from a bunch of 2016 Scale Out File Servers gives no errors

So upgrade those SOFS servers first and you will not run into problem 🙂

Here is my second post on experience with our lovely AzureStack multinode that we now have running.

First of all, there is now a good doc on the AzureStack site for Datacenter Integration and it is really important to read and understand the text. It is also vital to also have the networking guys on the wagon!

For a success in the deployment you will need to have a NAT functionality within your router/fw or have a transparent proxy. The doc says it is needed for the Infra Network that is called public, it is not public reachable but do need internet access. Some routers have advanced functionality with Policy based routing that can send infra traffic to a fw and public VIP traffic directly to and from internet!

Also during deployment the BMC network will need access to internet because the deployment VM running on the HLH will need to do a AAD login and registration if the stack is not being deployed as a disconnected version.

Certificates

Before you can get a deployment up and running you will need to make sure that the certificates that you ordered are rock solid! Follow the documentation and do not take any short cuts in wild card certs etc…

Next..

I had Honolulu in an earlier release installed on a Windows Server Insider 17035 build and wanted to try the new feature that came in 17079 with inplace upgrade, that did not however work out as wanted and I had to run a clean VM instead! I have not looked more into why the upgrade failed, probably because the documentation said that it was supported from 1709…

Thanks to the insider system it is already a VHDx there that I could download and use and add it to my domain.

Once that was done I could add the honolulu msi into the VM with the magnificent Copy-VMFile cmdlet

And after a simple install I could connect to it from a Chrome browser! (IE is not supported)

I know that I have been more than usual quiet in my blogging the latest months, that is because we have had much at work and I have been over my head in new tech stuff and among that I also been the lead in the implementation of our AzureStack multinode.

I will do a couple of blog posts about my experience and caveats that I have stumbled on so keep checking back!

First of all Me self and Geir-Morten from our company will do a session on friday at the NIC conference in Oslo

The Three Amigos fighting compliance with Azure Stack

Hybrid cloud with Azure Stack can deliver great benefits to your organization, helping you innovate and get faster to market. But at the same time also protect your sensitive information and stay compliant with regulations like GDPR. This session will focus on the different roles associated with the Azure Stack, from operating the Stack to the developer and IT pro bringing their solution into a true hybrid environment. The sessions will be packed with demos on a Azure Stack multi-node system showing the different roles in action in environment spanning not only Azure and Azure Stack, but also private clouds.

We have some demands on BIG-ASS VM´s and in our new environment with System Center 2016 and VMM 2016 we tried to add a hardware profile with more than 64 vCPU´s as now in Hyper-V 2016 we can have a VM with 240 vCPU´s and 12 TB of ram, but that cannot be done 🙁

We have also updated with the latest SCVMM CU4 but still no success! Neither via GUI or via PowerShell!

We installed a new Preview of SCVMM 1711 to see if it was any difference and guess what! It has finally been updated but we would much rather see it also comming in a CU in the near time for VMM 2016 as we cannot deploy a preview of the semianual into production..

The gui also have been updated for a hardware profile where it clearly states that it has to be a gen2 vm and also the OS cannot be lower than 2016 for both host and vm

I have got the opportunity to speak at Ignite again, this will be my third year I will do a session on this gigantic conference!

I have a Community Theater Session where I would love to have you as a guest if you will also be there and have some time for this topic!

“Using a PowerShell release pipeline for a real-world service provider delivery in Microsoft Azure”

Delivering managed services for a service provider can be cumbersome and often the quality and reliability is not first priority. Utilizing PowerShell and Desired State Configuration makes it repetitive, versionable, and testable! In this real-world case we have implemented a release pipeline to make sure that PowerShell scripts, modules, and dsc configurations are tested before put into production use in Azure Automation.

After installing/deploying the AzureStack DevKit i added the SQL RP and also wanted to add the App Service Resource Provider for a dev experience!

I have an relative ordinary HPE 380 G9 box with 128 GB of ram and 2 CPU´s so it should be fine, but there was some issues that I wanted to document to help others, this will probably be fixed in an later release of the App Service install pack though.

I downloaded the bits and ran the deploy App Service

After filling this out the deployment started but after a few hours it failed during the deploy step, I tried the Retry a couple of times but without luck, also closing the wizard makes you lose the stage of deploy and need to rerun the whole deploy! When doing a redeploy you have to delete the resource group APPSERVICE-LOCAL (or what you called it) and also go into your SQL server that you entered into the wizard and remove the appservice db´s!!

How did I mange to get it working though? I got some help from Andrew at Microsoft that works with the Stack team and he gave me some guidance how to get it into a good state! Apparently the App Service adds all uppdates during deploy and to be more successful the recommendation was to update with patches that was released up until last tuesday with the win2016 image and thus update to latest CU, mine came from the marketplace syndication with Azure and that one had not the patches when I did this test, I threw that away and ran the create image script adding the parameter for -includeLatestCU.

Rerunning the wizard and when it allthough had a image with latest and greatest patches got stuck on “App Service Deploy Failed” I went into the CN0-VM and opened the mmc for the state of the different servers in the App Service

I also hit the repair link and when all of them said “Ready” I added a new 0.status file I got from Andrew into the custom script folder on the CN0-VM, easiest way to do that was with the lovely PowerShell Direct that is part of the Win 2016!

and then went back into the wizard hitting Retry and this time it continued to the finish and my deployment was successful!